Who's up for hating Harborough with me?

It hasn't taken long.  We've learned to despise Harborough Town quickly this season.  Case in point - the number of people on KTFC Chat who used to casually drop into the online conversation they might pop across and watch Harborough on a Saturday when we were away from home.  Those comments were often derided by the rest of us back then, but those same people wouldn't DREAM of mentioning this sort of thing now.

And why would anyone want to visit "Bowden Park" anyway?  It has to be the most perfunctory stadium ever to grace this level of football.  For all of Latimer Park's numerous drawbacks, it is roughly a thousand times better than Harborough's sterile junior-school-level facility.  We were only there a few months ago yet I can't recall a single feature of note from their stadium.

As a club they are another in the seemingly never-ending stream of outfits being promoted far beyond their natural level by mysteriously benevolent funding.  How else would they be able to afford the wages of puffy, baby-faced goal-getter Ben Stephens, or afford the constant fines of angry nutter Connor Kennedy, or indeed, afford the never-ending pork-pie bills totted up by Liam Dolman?  And Mitch Austin isn't cheap, despite all evidence to the contrary.

And what of Market Harborough itself.  Leaving aside the fact we all love their town centre and wish Kettering town centre was half as good, the place isn't worth a damn!  What with functioning infrastructure, plenty of shops, top quality butchers and fishmongers and thriving indoor market, there's almost nothing worth mentioning.  The godforsaken place even has a cinema and theatre in the town centre....I mean, what's that all about?

And what of Harborough's favourite sons and daughters?  Well, it is the birthplace of Elizabethan era witch Agnes Bowker who supposedly gave birth to a cat.  The town also produced the bass player from evil 70's revival band Showaddywaddy, notably famous for giving us all an easy Jimmy Savile impression.  And Harborough also gave us Simon Park, who's band inflicted us with the tune "Eye-level", better known as the painful ear-worm opening music to "Van der Valk".  No doubt the town has also spawned more than the national average per population of nonces and serial killers too, but, sadly, Wikipedia has come up short on the subject.

Anyway, here's to thrashing their arses on Wednesday.

Or squeaking past them with a bobbly deflected goal popping in off Jonny's knee.  I'm easy either way.

Agnes Bowker's angry looking pussy

Hear all about it!

With curious timing, another Poppies Podcast took to the airwaves (?) interweb (?) this week.  

Another one, I hear you ask.  Well, yes, there was one before, a few years ago - linked somewhere on the blog under the title "Tinhat Podcast" although now the link goes nowhere.  Ah well, another dead link on Patgod.  Periodically we have a bit of a tidy-up and knock off some of the dead links, but we've always left the original "Tinhat" link up in the vain hope that this brilliant website will one day return....

All too often Poppies fans get a bit carried away and set-up a blog / journal / podcast after a pint or two too many on a Saturday evening.  There's nothing like being slightly intoxicated to make you suddenly think that everyone MUST be interested in your unfiltered opinions. Sometimes they'll put a second article on several months later, starting with the line, "....well, it's been a while....." but invariably they've spaffed their entire Poppies-related thoughts on a single effort.

Now we have "The Poppycast" hosted via Spotify where a bunch of eager young and even younger Sheffield based Poppies fans have spent an hour talking all things end-of-season Poppies.  Well done in talking about our faltering performances for a full hour.  Roughly 58 minutes more than I could manage, that's for sure.  Fair play lads, but starting this endeavour with less than a week of the regular season to go, the timing is interesting.  

Hopefully your positivity will carry you through to another episode after next Saturday's final game of the season, and, hopefully a few more editions to come next season when we are back in your local manor in the National North.....

"Loza - top signing there by Lav."
"Yes, wise words mate!"

The last sip from the last drink in the last chance saloon

There was a lovely moment at last week's solid display and victory at Bishops Stortford when our winning, coupled with other latest scores around the division leapfrogged us back to the top of the table.  Were it not for Lowestoft's eventual capitulation to Bedford we would have entered the final bend of the season as favourites for the title.  But, unfortunately it's all "ifs" and "buts".  In the final analysis, it could be argued that we wouldn't really have deserved to come to the last three games of the season on top of the pile after our shoddy run over the past few months.

Let's be honest - assuming we don't overall Bedford, we'll always look back on this season as the "one that got away".  Unacceptable performances and defeats away to Barwell, Harborough, Redditch and Banbury in the bleak mid-winter helped chip away at the excellent league position we'd earned.  Then there was the blandest of bland 0-0 at freely-conceding Lowestoft which, possibly, hurt us even more.  These followed up with inexplicably poor efforts at home to Bromsgrove, St Ives and Hitchin well and truly ended our pre-eminence in the division.

Accepted wisdom is that Lavery lost some of the dressing room at this time.  True?  Who knows.  But we seemed to shed a few good players (and Bruno Andrade) to be replaced with a mixture of journeymen and random strikers we never actually saw.  While other teams strengthened, we weakened.  As the pitches became trickier we stopped creating chances.  I swear I could have scored as many as Jonny Edwards for all the scant chances he has had since Christmas.  And I probably would have scored the penalty at Stratford too....

It also seems to be an unspoken truth that Lavs will be heading for the exit at the end of the season.  I think this would be a mistake as he has shown a great eye for a player and coaxed some excellent performances from them over large stretches of the season which was a great relief after last season's stodgefest under Leese.  Does Lavs deserve another season?  Absolutely.  Why not?  Is there anyone better knocking around?

Another seemingly accepted rumour relates to the more hands-on ownership of George and Fabian and possibly a blurring of roles within the management hierarchy.  I have no idea if this is true, or even whether that might be a good or bad thing.  We do know that George is rightly proud of his footballing coaching and qualifications and that Fabian takes his role as footballing director seriously.  

But, is it the case that so many different footballing voices might ultimately confuse the players?  Rightly or wrongly, footballers are historically not entirely synonymous with intellectual heft, so potentially having numerous voices perhaps giving differing opinions might have been a contributory factor in our stumbling second half of the season?  Again, we'll never know for certain.

And what of a few panic signings that didn't particularly feature in Lavery's plans?  Tate Xavier Jones?  Cyrus Bubble-Gum?  What the hell were they about?  Were they players Lavery wanted or were presented with, because if he wanted them he sure didn't show it..... 

Well, before we all go back to work on Tuesday we should have a much better idea of how the season will finish, and a much better idea of where to present the plaudits in the happy event there are any to bestow.

Well, that was a waste of a snazzy graphic....